


1M

by toezi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Cupid! Jihoon, I wanted to make a soft Jigyu but i dont think that really happened, Jihoon pov??, M/M, Only slightly studied heh, but also non reliable narrator, my own little adaption of cupid bc there's too many versions, not a mythology expert dont come for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-03-31 03:10:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13966089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toezi/pseuds/toezi
Summary: Au in which Jihoon is a cupid but doesn’t really know what love is.Or the au in which “Idiot” means “I love you”.





	1M

**Author's Note:**

> “Hey! I am not a fat baby. I am a small, slender man.” -Tom Haverford. Parks and Recreation Season 3, Episode 11 “Jerry’s Painting”.
> 
> "Whether it's love or not, It's unorganized and ambiguous between us. Sometimes far but sometimes near  
> A relationship with no meaning." -EXID, 1M

Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war begot a son named cupid. Upon his birth, Cupid was given 3 gifts. The first, a set of wings, for lovers are flighty and likely to change their minds. The second, a harp, the instrument believed to be the bridge of love between Heaven and Earth. The third, two arrows, one with a gold tip and one with a lead tip. When a target is struck with the gold tip, they are filled with an uncontrollable desire towards the object they first see. Conversely, the lead tip creates in the stricken target an aversion and a desire to flee from it’s match that it once loved. These arrows have no discrimination against any class of being. Whether the duo be a human and a god, mortal or immortal, there is no boundary to love.

Now, there are 8 types of love: Agape, Philia, Storge, Ludus, Mania, Pragma, Philautia, and our focus for this class, Eros. Eros can be defined as desire or erotic love and- Jihoon?

 

Jihoon.

 

Lee Jihoon!

 

Dazed, Jihoon’s head shot up from his desk.

He made eye contact with the alarm that awoke him from his nap: his professor.

“Was my lecture too boring for you, Mr. Lee?”

“No, sir.”

“Maybe the walk to the principal’s office will wake you up.”

Jihoon bowed his head in apology and walked out of the classroom, avoiding the staring eyes of his giggling peers.

He hated his Amore class anyways. He hated being a cupid.

 

He finally made it to the principal’s office. He stared at the door, not ready for his 6th scolding this month. E

very student fears being sent to the principal’s office, but it is a completely different story when your principal is Deimos, the god of dread and terror.

He took took a deep breath before knocking lightly on the door and entering at the insistence of “come in”.

“G-good morning, sir.” Jihoon stammered, his voice trembling with fear.

Deimos replied flatly “Jihoon.” and motioned for the young cupid to take a seat.

Jihoon had to sit on his hands to keep them from visibly quivering.

Deimos pulled up Jihoon’s records from his file and began looking it over silently.

The silence was worse than anything else.

“Let’s see. Amore history. F. Archery. C. Music. A. Flight training. F.” Deimos sighed and rubbed his temples. “Jihoon, if you can’t pull yourself together, I’ll have no choice but to send you back to training school.”

Desperate, Jihoon pleaded “Please please please, not training school. I’ll do anything! Just, please don’t send me back to training school.”

Deimos considered for a while. “I may be dreadful, but I am not cruel. I am assigning you to 3 years on Earth. Think of it as a learning internship, I suppose. You are to live amongst the mortals and study their interactions. Their relationships, their love. And I expect a full report upon your return.”

Jihoon loathed this option. The idea of living amongst the mortals was horrendous and made him sick to his stomach. But anything was better than training school. And maybe he could have a little fun with the humans.

He agreed to Deimos’s proposal and made his way to the door.

“Oh, and Jihoon?” He turned towards Deimos

“Yes, sir?”

“There are two rules. One, do not destroy an already existing mortal relationship. Two, absolutely no fornication is permitted between a cupid and a human.”

 _Crap_. So much for the more fun option.

Jihoon adapted pretty quickly to the mortal life. After a year on earth, he had adopted his own style and grew accustomed to the taste of human food. Rice quickly became his favorite meal.

He had the freedom to travel and finally settled in Seoul, South Korea. He enjoyed the cool weather and the atmosphere of the modern city. He even adopted his own style in the human form he took on. But the one thing he found to enjoy the most, was the music of humans. It was much more different from the hymns he learned to play during harp lessons. The music here carried humans’ souls. He would often spend his free time sitting in a park and strumming a guitar he had picked up a few months back. At first, he would simply replicate some tunes he had heard on the street, but eventually he learned to create original songs that lay somewhere between human and celestial melodies.

Halfway through his second year, Jihoon was visited by one of his counselors. A post grad, higher ranking cupid than he.

Seungcheol sat next to Jihoon on a park bench. “Jihoon.”

Jihoon strummed his guitar a little louder, hoping it would drown out Seungcheol’s voice.

“Lee Jihoon, I will smash your guitar.”

He stopped playing at the threat and sighed, throwing his head back. “What am I in trouble for now?”

“Do you really not know? Jihoon, we have been watching. All you’ve done is slack off this entire time.”

“What is there to do? Earth is so boring! I can’t do anything fun!” He groaned.

“I don’t know! Talk to someone! Shoot somebody with an arrow! Do something, anything, to make it seem like you are taking this opportunity seriously!”

Due to the lack of response from Jihoon, Seungcheol stood up and prepared to depart.

“If you haven’t done anything substantial by next month, you have to return home. But you may not even be allowed back into training school. I heard they might send you to do farm labor or maintenance work.

I… I want better for you Jihoon.”

Jihoon kept his eyes locked on the grass, refusing to watch Seungcheol’s departing figure.

 

 

Jihoon slept on it, and the next day decided that he should listen to Seungcheol’s advice.

He found himself on his usual park bench, watching parents and their children strolling through the park, waiting for any potential target.

He knew that there was some form of consideration that went into pairing a couple, but he never paid attention in that class, so he figured he would just target the first pair he sees and call it a day.

 

After a couple hours, two dark-haired, male humans began to approach. Jihoon reckoned that this would be as good an opportunity as ever. He grabbed his bow from his side and aimed for the male closest to him, the easier target.

_Aim._

_Breathe._

_Shoot._

“Ah! What the hell!” The boy had unexpectedly felt a sharp pain in his side. He looked around for the cause and spotted a wide-eyed, bewildered Jihoon staring at him from a park bench.

“It felt that?” Jihoon was confused as he and the human maintained eye contact.

However, the human’s eyes widened, his mouth dropped as he suddenly became filled with terror and awe.

_What the hell is he staring at…?_

Jihoon was unaware that if he shot an arrow at a mortal while in his human disguise, the mortal’s eyes would be opened and he would be able to see the characteristics that make a being celestial.

Jihoon then began to panic as the human approached him.

“W-what are you?”

“I’m… a human?” _That’s what a human would say right?_

“You have wings...”

“I’m… cosplaying?” Jihoon gave a crooked smile, hoping the human would believe him and leave.

“So you’re just… sitting in a park, in an extravagant angel cosplay, shooting arrows at strangers?”

“I am not an angel, I am a cupid!” Jihoon defended, then mentally scolded himself for getting worked up.

“How can you be cupid? Isn’t he just a fat baby?”

_Oh my god how can mortals live being this uneducated._

“My name isn’t cupid, idiot. I am A cupid. If I can even call myself that anymore considering all my failures.”

“Failures?” Mingyu took a seat next to Jihoon. “Do you want to talk about it.”

“No.”

 

A few hours had passed. Mingyu had asked Jihoon about his guitar, the topic of music had resulted in Jihoon opening up a little.

“I can’t believe I’m really sitting here, talking to a cupid.” Mingyu smiled, delighted that Jihoon had allowed him to stay and continue to chat.

“I can’t believe I’m talking to a human.”

Mingyu perked up at the slight hint of Jihoon ready to reveal more about himself. “Well, why are you here on earth? And not in heaven, or whatever?”

“I’m studying human love.”

“Studying?”

“Yes. I’ve failed all my classes, so obviously I don’t know what it is.”

“Well what is human love to you?” Mingyu asked gently.

Without a moment of hesitation Jihoon replied abruptly “Sex.”

“Well… I guess that’s an aspect. But there’s many types of love like-”

Jihoon cut him off, “Yeah, yeah. Eros is erotic love, Agape is selfless love blah blah blah.”

“Is it all just terms and vocab to you? Haven’t you ever loved somebody?”

“Cupids aren’t trained to love, they’re trained to recognize and initiate love.” Jihoon stated, almost robotic.

Mingyu paused for a moment. “Well, I love you.”

Jihoon scoffed, “Because I shot you with an arrow, idiot.”

“I think I would still love you either way, idiot.”

Jihoon looked into Mingyu’s eyes for the first time since he sat on the bench. Jihoon could read a thousand words in Mingyu’s eyes. Words of sympathy, of genuine care, words that he had only seen in cheesy human novels.

“Idiot…”

He wondered if his eyes could ever say the same things.

 

 

So that’s how they spent their time together. Everyday, sitting on the same park bench. Sometimes Mingyu would bring two cups of coffee. Sometimes Jihoon would strum his guitar. But mostly, they would talk. They would argue over fried versus steamed rice, they would talk about music. Jihoon would listen to Mingyu’s ramblings about his past, his childhood home, his mom’s cooking, his heartbreaks. Jihoon was always persistent that their conversations stayed on earthly topics. The best way to keep himself distant from Mingyu was to keep the latter ignorant regarding Jihoon’s celestial life.

He feared getting close to Mingyu, for he knew this day would eventually come.

The end of his 3 years on earth. He was set to leave tomorrow. But he never told Mingyu that his stay had an expiration date.

For now, he relished in every word that Mingyu spoke, he admired his voice.

“But listen, a squid would obviously be the best choice for a therapy animal because some produce ink that contains dopamine!”

“That’s ridiculous, Mingyu, who would want a squid over a dog?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of therapy birds!”

“You did NOT just equate a bird to a squid just because they both have beaks.”

For now, he relished in _some_ words that Mingyu spoke.

 

The next day, Mingyu returned to the park with Jihoon nowhere to be found. It was rare that he show up before Jihoon, but he decided to sit and wait.

 

Hours passed while Jihoon watched from afar, hoping Mingyu would give up and leave. Hoping Mingyu would give up on Jihoon. Hoping he wouldn't have to resort to this last option.

He sighed and prepared a lead tip arrow.

_Aim._

_Breath._

_Shoot._

He left before he could experience the effects.

 

So Jihoon returned back to his realm. He mindlessly made his way through his classes, accomplishing the bear minimum to pass, for he feared having to return to earth. He feared never seeing Mingyu again, but he feared seeing him again even more.

Even if he did return, time passed by much differently in this realm, so he knew that Mingyu would soon be gone.

He shed tears at the thought of Mingyu passing the park bench, at the thought of Mingyu missing him.

He sobbed at the the thought of Mingyu never missing him. For Mingyu’s love for Jihoon was just a product of gold that carried a celestial power. For Mingyu’s heart could be so easily swayed by just another arrow. But Jihoon’s love had grown out of companionship. Out of a connection that beings like him so rarely have the chance to experience. Mingyu’s memory of Jihoon would soon fade, and eventually die. But Jihoon’s memory of Mingyu will haunt him for all eternity.

 

On earth, a cupid fell in love with a human.

On earth, a cupid discovered love. A cupid lost a friend.

Love may be boundless, but it is not painless. 

**Author's Note:**

> Damn unreliable narrator Jihoon! Mingyu loved u u goof!!!!! 
> 
> This has been a child of my brain for... a while lol. I feel like I always have way too many ideas and I need to learn to just choose one direction and try to make that come across clearly. I,, try. 
> 
> Thank you to Evy,, for rooting for me and Mely for always proofreading and giving my ideas the green light I love ya'll. 
> 
> I uh, have twitter @arrozconuji  
> And tumblr @toezi  
> Habla conmigo sobre Jigyu por favor TT


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